musings by michelle

Pinterest has really changed my life, our house, and my husband’s list of projects. 😉 Really, though, it’s been a great source of new ideas for our home, and often, with detailed instructions on how to carry them out. People out there have some really great ideas, and it’s fun to be able to find and tap into them so easily!

So, here’s the latest. I had seen this pin, showing a shelf behind a couch. I actually liked this idea for our basement “rec” room, but when I showed it to Matt, he wanted to do it in our living room. And I quickly agreed — though we have side tables on each end of our couch, if you sit in the middle, there is nowhere to put your drink. We don’t have a coffee table, we have a storage ottoman, and it’s precarious to put a glass on it.

Since we have an 18-month-old running around, we have constantly had to keep an eye on the TV remote and our beverages, so this would be perfect for keeping those things just a little more out of the way (though she CAN climb up on the couch).

So far, our intention is to keep this space purely functional, and not put any decorative items on it. Since we already have an adjacent wall full of floating shelves, I really don’t want to clutter up more space with things. This new shelf is actually pretty invisible unless we put something on it.

Here’s the (very easy!) breakdown: We bought a length of wood, cut it to the length of our couch, sanded it, stained it, put a couple coats of polyurethane on it, and hung it on the wall with four “L” brackets. Though we probably won’t use it to hold a lot of weight, we did screw all the “L” brackets into studs…. so if some kiddo tries to sit on it someday, hopefully it’ll stay put. We already had the sand paper, stain, and poly; so our only cost for this project was the wood ($18) and the brackets ($11).

Hi, our names are Michelle and Matt, and we have a floating shelf problem.